Ep. #513: Dr. Jay Gordon, Ronan Farrow

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Right here with me.

I appreciate it.

I love you too.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming out.

Thank you for coming out to the free show.

Did you have a good Halloween?

Tough Halloween.

No, tough to stage Halloween this year in Los Angeles because who needs a smoke machine when you know

the house is on fire.

We've got a bad situation under 70 mile-an-hour winds, and every porch has a pumpkin with a candle in it.

What could go wrong?

No, yesterday I was here on the lot.

You could smell smoke, and for once it wasn't me.

It's sad, but you know, we're just in California having to get used to this, right?

I mean, I heard somebody today at the coffee shop say, I love your go bag.

Where'd you get it?

Thank you.

Well, they're evacuated.

Pacific Palisades, one of the wealthiest communities in America.

They evacuated them to the public schools out there.

I know that.

Oh, you're way ahead of me, isn't it?

Right.

They went, there's a public school?

Lori Laughlin today paid her kids to get into a better shelter.

But, okay.

But let's not just dwell on us.

There's a big country out there, and it was a big week.

Congress finally did it.

They voted to formalize impeachment hearings.

Well,

it got zero Republican votes.

Zero Republicans think Trump has done anything that's even worth checking out.

Yeah, their view is they're outraged.

Their Democrats are trying to overturn the election and thwart the will of the Russians.

No, it's amazing that they turn it around.

Like the Democrats, they're using Soviet-style tactics.

They're staging a coup.

And yet, the rules are nearly identical to the ones that they had in 1998 when they impeached Bill Clinton.

This resolution lays out clear rules for public hearings, requires a public report on all findings, authorizes the sharing of all evidence.

Trump's lawyers are allowed to be involved.

If it's a coup, it is the most magnanimous coup I've ever seen in my life.

And

the hearings, Nancy Pelosi says they hope to start right before Thanksgiving.

Great idea.

Get our Trump-loving relatives

at peak panic mode right before we hand them the giant carving knife.

I mean,

no, the Trump people, their view is that everyone else is corrupt and human scum.

Donald Trump, he's the clean one.

Everything about him reads clean, doesn't it?

He's not going anywhere.

But a Democrat resigned this week, Katie Hill, from right next county up, yeah, right?

I don't know what you're,

again, just say we're going to talk about it, but there were pretty graphic pictures of her kissing women and smoking a bong nude.

To which,

well,

exactly.

She was a representative of California.

That's pretty representative.

Now, President Trump ventured out of his bubble this week and did not like it.

He got booed at game five of the World Series.

And

as soon as he heard the booing and the chanting, he left early.

He ran back to his Fox News and his rallies of certified fans and his folder of positive news clippings.

And then Tucker Carlson came on TV and did an hour about,

can you believe these college kids with their safe spaces?

It was so close to not fucking that one up.

If you only knew how delicate this job is.

But now Trump has said that he has had it with the East Coast elitists.

He is changing his official residency now to Florida.

Did you see that?

Wow, news flash, elderly New Yorker moves to Florida.

You know what?

I am all for it.

I think the headlines would just make a lot more sense if you replaced President Trump with Florida Man,

right?

Florida man starts pointless trade war

Florida man caught fucking porn star at golf tournament

Florida man trying to deny Georges and then gives a full public confession I mean it's

but something happened just a couple hours before we went on want to update you I've been busy all day better O'Rourke has dropped out of the race He says he wants to spend more time getting into a thrupple with Katie Hill.

Okay, we got a great show.

We got Dennis Prager, Christina Bellentoni, and Richard Stengelin here a little I'll be speaking with Ronan Farrow as vaccine.

But first up he is a he is a noted author and pediatrician who gives vaccines to children, to adults, and to himself, but who has been called an anti-vaxxer.

Here to explain how that could be possible, Dr.

Jay Gordon.

Dr.

Gordon.

Hello, sir.

Yes, pleasure to meet you.

And I thank you for coming on.

It's courageous these days just to speak at all about the subject of vaccines.

They do take shots at you, yes.

They take shots at you, yes.

No, they do.

I mean, it's one of those things in our culture where there is the one true opinion, but we don't play that game here.

So I know you've had the experience of being on other shows, and when you get off the air, this happens here too, you get off the air and somebody goes, oh, you know, yeah, but you can't say that on TV.

Has that happened with you?

Notably, it happened some years ago.

I was on a show called The Doctors, which was enjoyable.

And I was on with a colleague, a doc I'd known for a long time.

And it was a show about a family with seven children, the first four of whom had autism.

The next three didn't have autism.

And the video of their house was not fun to watch.

And she was pregnant with her eighth child.

And there was a spirited discussion.

And Dr.

Jim Sears, who was a pediatrician on the show, a member of the great Sears family of pediatricians, commented.

He said, you know, if you were in my practice, I wouldn't vaccinate your eighth child.

And everybody applauded.

And after the show was over, I walked out to the parking lot with my friend, the other pediatrician, good old friend.

And he said to me,

Do you really believe that vaccines cause autism?

I said, there's an impact.

I can't prove anything.

So I talked quietly.

I said, let me ask you a question.

Do you believe that there's no effect from vaccines on the incidence of autism?

And he said to me

there might be a very small percentage of children who are adversely affected.

And I said that's all.

That's all I'm talking about.

But you can't say it on TV.

That's answering.

This is, say we're saying it on TV.

We're just saying, yes, we're just, and you know, to call you this crazy person, I mean, really what you're just saying is slower, right?

Yes.

Maybe less numbers.

And also take into account individuals.

People are different.

Family history, stuff like that.

I don't think this is crazy.

I don't think it's crazy either.

If you have seven children and four of them have autism, you've got to consider the environmental purpose.

I mean, look, on the autism issue, they certainly have studied it a million times, including out of this country.

Yes.

Now, I don't trust this country so much because of paychecks, I mean, for writing checks to people.

But they've discovered in other countries, they say it's a, and yet there's all these parents who say, I had a normal child, got the vaccine.

This story keeps coming over.

It seems to me more realistic to me, if we're just going to be realistic about it.

Like, it probably happens so rarely,

but no one, you can't say it happens one in a million times, because then somebody will think, well, it's,

it could be that millionth one.

And you see, you scare people, so you can't say what might be the more realistic opinion.

Regarding a lot of conditions and diseases, there's a genetic predisposition and an environmental environmental trigger.

The National Institute of Health used to have a poster that you could buy.

It said, genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.

And they were talking about diabetes, they were talking about arthritis and a lot of other conditions.

Maybe that's true about autism, but again, I talk much more quietly because I have no proof.

It may be is the whole, my whole point with this is maybe is that we just don't know so much.

This whole situation to me is how you look at it as a patient.

As a patient, I've caught doctors not knowing what they should know.

Some doctors keep up with what's happening lately, and some stop at medical school.

Some don't.

Have you met doctors who are idiots?

I've been accused of the same myself.

Okay.

I've met doctors who I don't think were well enough informed, and as you said, they just stopped reading and they stopped thinking.

Well, okay, exactly.

We are at the beginning of understanding how the human body works.

You know,

people say vaccines, of course vaccines work, and we applaud them for all the great things they've done.

They're a great tool in the medical kit.

Maybe the greatest.

But that's the beginning of the debate.

I don't understand what they can't get about that.

Yes, they work.

So do antibiotics work.

Statins work.

Chemotherapy works.

I'm concerned with what happens down the road.

Nothing is free.

Nothing that I do is free.

I feel like I should give you

a little bit of a discussion before I recommend Tylenol because of the impact on the liver.

Discussion about ibuprofen about the impact on the kidneys.

And when someone gets antibiotics from me, I talk to them about, you know, there could be a yeast infection, you could get diarrhea and the rash, sorry about the diarrhea and the rash.

Right.

But with vaccines,

the discussion is closed.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer.

If I was going to Liberia tomorrow and there was a bull outbreak, I'd get it.

Whatever you could get.

Of course.

You give it to yourself the flu shot, you say.

We'll get to the flu.

We'll get to measles.

Don't worry.

But here's the thing.

They've been wrong about so much.

I object to when doctors, the people in the white coats, are like, don't ask any questions about this.

When have we ever been wrong?

When?

Just with me, you drilled mercury into my teeth.

You put me on Accutane, which is one of almost 100 medications that were said safe and effective that have been pulled off the market.

Black box warnings.

Black box.

Black box warnings.

That's what they call it.

And it's read this before you prescribe or take this medication.

You could die.

Right.

Well, okay.

Well, luckily, I haven't.

Discussion is a tough discussion.

I haven't died, but they did a lot.

I mean, I have had misdiagnosis, bacterial infection that was really a fungal infection.

Lots of stuff.

This whole idea of when were we ever wrong, all the time.

You don't know.

one week you tell us here this is time magazine from two years ago surprising news about salt

yes oh my life i've been told this is the a new study found healthy people who reported eating more sodium had no higher blood pressure than those who ate less trans fats

remember 15 years ago get that in you the can't believe it's not butter.

Now it's illegal.

Well, that turned out to be the worst.

That scandal, some years ago when they were trying to find

the genesis of heart disease, there were two considerations, sugar and fat.

And they paid off Harvard Medical School professors 50 grand to lay the blame at the feet of fat.

And for a long time we were told stay.

Now, a high-fat diet makes you fat.

It's not the food pyramid.

But it was bullshit.

Right.

Four servings of bread.

Excuse me, I don't think any servings of bread are good.

Now, people are like, what are you talking about, Bill?

Wholesome wheat?

Look it up.

You know, these people who are like, don't talk about vaccines because you don't know anything.

You don't know anything.

We're told that in medical school.

A third or a half of what you learn this year will probably be wrong five years from now.

Not just a little, but 180 degrees wrong.

All I'm saying is,

for me, I had my childhood vaccines.

Okay, I got a flu shot once a long time ago.

It gave me the flu right away.

Which is okay, didn't kill me, but it's not what it's supposed to do.

That's embarrassing, isn't it?

I gave you a shot.

Vaccines, like every medicine, right, have side effects.

Yes.

So let's not deny that or pretend it doesn't happen.

So we're just talking about which ones, how much, how do we manage this?

This is not crazy talk.

We don't do it the way that we should do it.

Manufacturers don't put...

We don't manufacture vaccines as well as we could.

We have a schedule that's invariable for every single child one size, doesn't really fit all.

The polio vaccine that I would get as a 180-pound man is the same thing that I give to a 12-pound baby.

We could do it a lot better.

I don't want to bring, I don't want to bring polio back.

I don't want to bring measles back.

Measles is a nasty illness.

And we had news in the, it's interesting you heard today, just today, they found out that measles

has something called.

Annesia.

It causes the immune system to forget a lot of the antibodies.

So it's actually

a much more harmful disease than we thought.

Great, new information.

Right.

We're accepting of new information.

Everyone should be.

It's called learning.

You learn.

It's called learning, right?

So, okay, let me just read you this.

This is from the New York Times a year and a half ago.

Is this tissue a new organ?

Maybe.

A conduit for cancer?

It seems likely.

Let me just read a little bit from the article.

Researchers have made new discovery about the in-between spaces in the human body, and some say it's time to rewrite the anatomy books.

The interstitium, they call it

fluid-filled 3D lattice work of collagen and elastin connective tissue that can be found all over the body.

They say it's hard to describe, it's a highway of moving fluid, a previously unknown feature of human anatomy.

So there's this whole new organ in the body we didn't know about a year and a half ago, but you're telling me don't ask questions about this.

This is just so ridiculous.

And for people who are saying, well, Bill, what does that have to do with vaccines?

If you can't figure that out, stop listening.

I'm just saying, we don't know shit.

That's why when doctors, you get a diagnosis, the other doctor gives you another one.

They say, right away, get a second opinion.

Well, okay, right away you're telling me it's an opinion.

And the second one never matches the first.

We're guessing.

We don't know a lot about how the body works.

So how do vaccines fit in with, I don't know, all the new chemicals that have been, there's thousands of new chemicals, pollutants, irritants.

We didn't used to have all this corn syrup in our bodies, antibiotics.

It could be any combination.

So, I'm a little cautious.

Everybody who writes newspaper columns and people on,

pundits on television ridicule the pharmaceutical industry, the high cost of FPS, $500, the $311,000 medication for children for cystic fibrosis, the fact that we pay 10 times more for medications than in other countries.

They make fun of the pharmaceutical industry, they don't trust the pharmaceutical industry except for this.

One sacrament.

And

nobody is doing honest

reporting about this.

And it drives me crazy.

Okay.

Because

there aren't two sides to it.

It's not pro and anti.

There are people in the middle, as you mentioned.

I give vaccines, I get vaccines, but I'd like to slow down a little bit and I'd like to talk.

I mean, here, yeah.

Well, we're doing it.

Oh, okay, thank you.

Thank you for doing it.

The flu vaccine.

I would never get one.

Here's,

now, in last year, it was 47% effective.

That was a good year.

That was a good year.

In 2014, it was 19% effective.

That was not a good year.

2004, it was 10% effective.

05, it was 21% effective.

But they don't say, oh, well, it's not very effective.

Don't take it.

That doesn't make people a little skeptical.

It should make them very skeptical.

Thank you.

And there are experts

who have studied this who said, look, we have to stop telling people that we have a great flu shot because it keeps venture capital out of the arena.

We could eventually have a great flu shot.

And one of the more interesting scandals involved the flu mist, the nasal flu vaccine.

And we promoted that vaccine heavily because there's no needle.

It was found that for two years that shot had zero effectiveness, zero efficacy.

They pulled it off the market last year and they put it back on the market this year, kind of we'll see.

So there were doctors wandering around the newborn intensive care unit who thought that they had immunity to influenza and they had to.

We just don't, it's arrogant.

It is.

You know, I read recently, they don't know how anesthesia works.

They know that it works.

They don't know why.

Right, exactly.

But I should just shut up about all the...

Anesthesia in childhood is a very controversial topic because it's not good for you to be knocked out.

So I've done reading to find out why general anesthesia work.

We don't know.

We joculate.

They say perhaps it destroys fat in the brain cells.

We don't know.

That's strange.

You know, when someone comes to me and they say, you know, I went to the doctor the other day, I have cancer, and they know exactly what caused it, and they know exactly how to cure it, then I'll say, okay, I'll shut up about asking questions about anything else medical.

Until then, I'm not going to shut up, and you shouldn't either.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Thank you all.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Okay.

Here they are.

He is the former Under Secretary of State and author of Information Wars, How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.

Richard Stengel, great to see you, Rich.

Hi.

She's a former LA Times Assistant Managing Editor and is now a journalism professor at USC Annenberg.

Christina Bellentoni.

Great to have you back

and he is the host of the Dennis Prager Radio Show who stars in the new documentary No Safe Spaces Dennis Prager.

Dennis?

All right don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we're going to answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay so we have crossed the Rubicon on impeachment right?

Okay, they had a vote.

It's going to happen now.

Zero Republicans voted for it in the House.

This should tell you something.

And what it tells me is anyone who's been hoping that maybe he will be convicted in the Senate by Republicans, that's not going to happen.

He's not going to get convicted.

I'm getting that from this vote.

I always thought we got Trump backwards, that he was a novice politician, but a great businessman.

He was actually a horrible businessman who lost all the money he borrowed from his father.

But genius politician.

And what he got was the Electoral College.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona.

those are the states that is going to decide this election.

Impeachment, 53% oppose in those states.

It's a loser where

this election is going to be decided.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it.

I'm just throwing out that to get your opinion on that.

The reason it's not a loser is because once it starts happening, it becomes educational.

People learn how he has abused the public trust, how he has violated separation of powers, all of those things.

You think?

With the Nixon impeachment, there are fewer people who are supportive of Nixon's impeachment as he was being impeached than people who support the Trump.

But that's assuming that we're living in 1974 and people have three television channels and they're going to be watching the hearings.

I don't think we live in that world anymore.

That's why it started increasing for Nixon as soon as the hearing started.

People were for impeachment as soon as the hearing started.

That will happen.

I get because they watched it on TV and I don't think they might do that who aren't already watching.

The timing is important here, right?

Think about how important the timing was when Mitch McConnell said, we are not going to pass a Supreme Court justice before Obama leaves office.

Right.

It's the almost same scenario, very different topic, where Nancy Pelosi's literal moves about when this happens, it happens in the House, Mitch McConnell closes it in 10 seconds, and then what?

Trump will go out campaigning and say, Totally exonerated, everything's cool.

And then is that something that he can campaign on?

Now, I am with you in that it will have enormous interest.

We know that the interest in politics alone has just dramatically increased over the years, especially with the Trump presidency.

But it all depends on where you're getting your facts.

Right.

And we don't get them from the same place.

So I have a slightly dissenting view.

I know.

As you're shocked to learn.

The Democrats never accepted.

I think we can...

Most of us can agree on this.

Democrats did not accept the fact that he defeated Hillary Clinton.

Yes, they did.

No, they, well, I'll prove it.

They just pointed out that it was in the Electoral College.

That's correct.

That's called winning.

No one said it wasn't nonetheless.

Yes, so they have not accepted it.

I didn't say they didn't accept it losing.

I don't accept that.

You're wrong about that.

We accepted it.

We call him President Trump.

Right.

No, no, no.

Then your side wouldn't accept.

No, no, no.

He doesn't accept losing.

Then how come there is such a massive movement on the part of the Democratic Party to eliminate the Electoral College?

because they don't want this to happen.

They regret it ever happened.

Then they tried to get rid of him through the Russia collusion thing.

The Russia

collusion thing didn't turn out to be anything.

Well, it's so now

it's a lie.

Okay.

Let's talk about what happened.

Totally okay.

But I just.

I appreciate that.

I know.

And it's not over.

But let me turn to this week.

You know, we're getting into lots of other.

Trump says, defend me on substance.

This is what he's saying to the Republicans.

You're talking about process so far.

This is from Trump.

Defend me on substance.

I say bring that on.

Let's have this talk about substance, this idea that Congress appropriates money to give to an ally to defend itself.

And then the president can get on the phone and say, no, you can't have this Congress appropriated money unless you do me a personal political favor.

Are we all agreeing that that's okay, not just for him, but in the future?

That future presidents can do this?

Is this okay?

Can you defend him on that?

Our disagreement is not on whether it would be okay in the future, it's whether it actually happened in the past.

What?

There is the

president, unless you think the president of Ukraine is lying as well on behalf of Trump,

he denies that there was any quid pro quo.

He's in a desperate man.

There was no quid pro quo that the Ukrainians were aware of.

Okay, have you seen the testimony of all the people who've come so far?

Yeah.

They've all said quid pro-quo.

This is what happened.

And they've also moved forward because it started to get repetitive because so many people were confirming what actually is the accusation.

This is what

this is what we have.

You're making talking points from three weeks ago.

Now we've had Bill Taylor.

This guy, you saw that?

Yeah.

Vindemann, he was listening to the call.

This guy, Tony Morrison, today, they all said, yes, he did this.

This is not a...

No, no.

By the way, it's not even a quid pro quo.

It's extortion.

He basically said, unless you.

Unless you.

And you know what?

I was in the State Department.

We used to do quid pro quo, too.

And the quid pro quo was, in exchange for you treating people better, for you demonstrating human rights, for having rule of law, then we will help you.

That's the kind of quid pro quo America has always done.

Not

unless you help me, you'll get the money that Congress appropriates.

All right, look, we all heard the exact same calls, or at least saw the same transcript.

I did not see a quid pro quo,

and I don't know how you did.

You can say it is implied, you could say that they implied that

it's not in the transcript.

Read the transcript.

This is said that

Russia said in the transcript.

By the way, this is the same.

It's said that we can't even agree when it's in black and white.

No, no, it's said that we can't agree on what reality is.

Exactly.

And the hatred of Trump is so great.

It's not that.

I think it distorts people's perception of reality.

What about the love is what is happening to me?

How many people in this audience truly believe Russia undermined our democracy?

That's my point.

That is

because

they did.

They did nothing essential.

Nothing.

But they can't undermine our democracy.

It's a way too strong democracy.

They took out ads and Facebook.

That undermined our democracy.

Do you understand how pathetic we sound?

That's pathetic.

We're not a pathetic country.

Hello.

Hello.

They did more than that.

That's low.

Yeah, so what do you call it, it, Dennis, when a political candidate, i.e.

Donald Trump, asks for help from a hostile foreign power and then that foreign power gives that help?

Isn't that clear?

What are you referring to?

The Internet Research Agency.

Oh, okay.

The Internet Research Agency.

I dealt with all of this disinformation at the State Department.

So it was a tsunami of disinformation.

Could they put out a question?

Because that's going to get in the weeds.

When you see people like this Bill Taylor,

okay, this is the deep state, which really means people with resumes who know something.

People who've been in public service for decades.

This Vindeman, who was a, he came here when he was three, Ukrainian, served this country, Purple Heart in Iraq, Harvard.

When you call, when you see people like this, and he's done it before, to Brennan and to Clapper, these people, these lifelong public servants, by the way, mostly conservatives, because that's who gets those kind of jobs and does that kind of work.

For the record, Brennan had voted communist in his earlier years.

Just for the record, he is not a conservative, please.

Let's return to earth.

Brennan is as far left as ever served in his role in the United States.

This is the truth.

He's the first of the right.

He's a liberal.

Really?

It is?

Okay.

Is he a communist?

He was.

He was.

I'm not saying he is.

I said he was.

I don't even remember when they were on the ballot.

All right.

Quite frankly.

What election was that?

Was that he was?

Oh, yeah, Clinton and Ross Perot.

Right, and

Mao.

Okay, so.

But here's

those deep state people, what we're talking about.

Remember before the 2016 election, there was a letter that came out from national security officials saying they were so alarmed by Trump as a person, they felt that he was going to be a dangerous president and that he would put the nation's national security at risk.

That's a big deal.

And that's a lot of these people.

And then a lot of them went to work for him anyway because they put good of the...

What do you think about these people being trash?

These patriots, these

are

out of the equation.

Some of these other ones are

scums, and they're not.

I don't totally oppose them calling white scum.

Great.

You agree on that?

We do.

Absolutely.

What a place to start.

Okay, so.

Lifelong public servants shouldn't be called scum.

Thank you, sir.

Right.

No, no, no.

No, no.

That's all.

No, I have a different.

I have a different take.

No one would deny that there are scummy people anywhere in the world, but a president of the United States should not use that language with regard to political folks.

But Vinderman is a very important thing.

But you can't say Vindeman isn't a scummy.

All right, no, no, no.

I'm just saying.

We're in agreement, so let's not differ where we agree.

Okay.

All right.

But this is my take.

I believe these people so loathe Donald Trump.

so deeply loathe him that they have they have worked out in their mind and I understand this,

he is so evil.

It's so wrong what you're saying.

I'm going to think he's evil.

Yes, because he's just like this.

It's not like we made it up.

Here's what they do, Dennis.

Do you think he's a fascist?

Well, I think he wants to be, yes.

Of course.

The number of things he's done that are exactly what third world fascist leaders do, like talk about locking people up who are your political opponents, that's not fascist.

And here's

lock them up.

No, no, no.

Encouraging to lock up your political opponents.

Did he lock them up or is it his usual hyperbole?

But that's okay.

That's okay for an American president.

No, it is not.

I agree with you.

I don't like his verbiage, but he's not a fascist.

And what's going to happen is if there are real fascists in America, you will have cried wolf.

What's so wrong, Dennis, with your assumption about these people is the deep state.

I worked in the deep state for three years.

The deep state is composed of people who deeply believe in in the state, who take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

That's what those people are doing.

And they're doing it at

great risk to themselves, to their livelihoods, to their careers, because they care about that.

And they will not betray the public trust, unlike the President of the United States, who betrays everyone.

I'm serious.

Do you feel...

Do you believe?

Okay.

One quick question.

Yes, please.

Do you believe that Hillary Clinton with her server and

see, this is mind-blowing.

Good.

Look, this is good that people react that way because I love clarity.

You don't believe that she betrayed the public trust, the Secretary of State?

Can I tell you something?

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I answered his question.

Please answer mine.

Do you believe she betrayed the public trust?

No, I do not.

Okay, fine.

And every other Secretary of State used a private email address.

And erased 30,000 files.

Okay, but they

got $500,000 a speech while she was secretary of the state.

Again, your talking points are two weeks late.

No, no, no, no, no.

It was a news by

the way.

It came out two weeks ago.

Yeah, that was.

They looked at it again.

The Justice Department looked at it again.

They found they exonerated her, as Comey did.

Now, she did lie about it.

I'll give you that one.

She did lie.

But no, were they actually something that was threatening to the Republic?

They weren't.

But I must move on.

Excuse me.

I'm so sorry.

But we've got Ronan Farrow over here, and we're anxious to get him out.

He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New Yorker magazine, whose latest book is Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

Rodin Farrow.

How are you doing?

I can't wait to see you.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you.

Well,

it's a shame you're on a night.

We're here on a night when we're so calm.

Yeah, I was glad to miss out on some of that.

Yes.

Okay, so let's get to your topic, which is

the subtitle of your book, Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

When you use the word conspiracy, it implies something very widespread.

Now, it's about NBC, but do we take that to mean something more widespread?

It's about more than NBC.

There is a significant body of carefully fact-checked reporting about NBC, but it's about AMI, the publisher of the National Enquirer.

Right.

And there's a lot of new reporting in here about some of the extreme tactics they use to bury stories for Donald Trump.

The vault.

The vault.

You've seen it.

In order to see the list of the contents of the vault.

Why would they let you,

of all the people in the world, the mayor of me too,

Why would they let you see that list?

This is the list of things they had on Donald Trump that they've destroyed now?

So it was a list entitled something to the effect of Killed Stories About Donald Trump.

Killed story.

That's catch and kill.

Exactly, which is this practice of tabloid outlets acquiring stories for powerful people, not to publish them, but to bury them.

It was made during the election, and one of the pivotal revelations in this book is that before the election, there was a shredding party, and some of the contents of this list went missing.

What's on the list?

What did they shred?

As with so many stories about the Inquirer, they were burying stories that were true, like the Karen McDougall affair, which is one story I reported on.

They were burying some stories that were maybe dubious, like this story about a Trump love child that I reported on, which we've talked about on air before.

How could he not?

He never used protection.

How could he not have loved children?

Well, but also who cares, right?

It could be true, it could not be true.

But what is newsworthy is that the inquirer paid a significant sum to bury that story during the election.

That is a potential violation of election law.

There was later an agreement signed between the inquirer and prosecutors where they admitted, we did this and maybe it's a crime.

So it is consequential that they destroyed things.

The contents of the list, like that Lovechild story, seem less consequential.

Now it may not encompass the full universe of everything they ever had on Trump, but as far as the list reflected, it was about five affairs.

It was 60 items all told.

There was one allegation of misconduct, which was the Jill Hearth case, which later became became public.

So I want to be clear.

This was related to his work with beauty pageants, and there's a long history on that allegation.

There's some credibility to it, but the point is, these are claims that became public ultimately.

Okay, so the burying of them is the thing, and these are systems of burying things for powerful people to extend.

And it has a lot of credibility, because certainly your story about NBC and Harvey Weinstein, that's the template.

And if that happened there, obviously it could happen elsewhere.

And I mean, this is the crux of your book.

You had this story on Harvey Weinstein.

NBC buried it.

You say,

not for good reasons, because they were protecting Matt Lauer, really, right?

Matt Lauer was a cash cow.

I've never watched morning television.

I don't know why one guy sitting next to one woman makes a difference in the ratings, but for some reason, Matt Lauer had the magic beans in him.

And so

ratings are three points higher on NBC than CBS, then that equals $8 million more dollars.

So they had to protect Matt Lauer.

You're very chill about this, Bill, but it is a big deal for these networks and and yes

money's a big deal

and and that is the theme that runs through these vast circles of mutual protection amongst powerful people money is a big deal greed is a big deal and protecting these sacred cow cash earners is a big deal.

And in this case,

you know, as I was digging on Harvey Weinstein and there's a whole saga of I'm getting chased by private spies and Harvey Weinstein is employing all of these extreme tactics to try to stop the reporting on this story.

The media also colluded with him and other powerful people at times to make sure that the truth didn't see the light of day.

In the case of NBC, the reporting is very careful in there, and their denials of this are in there.

But certainly they have now admitted that there were many, many secret calls between Harvey Weinstein and executives, and I document how in those calls there were promises made to kill the story.

Now, Matt Lauer broke his silence.

He said, you know, it's over.

I'm not going to be quiet anymore.

Enough's enough.

My kids are giving me permission to do it.

He's been accused of rape in the book.

He says that's too far.

What do you say to that?

Like every other serious allegation in the book, his thinking is reflected in there, and the idea that he really believed this to be consensual is in there, and you can judge the facts on your own, anyone who's reading the book.

What this young journalist who alleges rape says is that she was too drunk to consent, and she said no to a specific sex act that he then proceeded with.

So for her, it is very cut and dry.

And he talks about the fact that they had ongoing sexual contact, which she freely admits.

She She describes that as she's a terrified young employee of a company with the most powerful man at that company.

Which happens.

She's reticent, and it happens a lot, as you say.

It's a complex situation.

It is a complex situation following an assault that she says was not at all complex.

And again, people can look at the careful rendering of those facts and decide.

Now, what do you think your father would say about what you're doing now?

Meaning,

if he were alive.

You see, I knew I was walking into that, so I asked.

I didn't want to give you the sound bite of which one,

but you wanted it.

You wanted it so badly that.

Well, just because I feel like there was nobody who was less me-too-y than Frank DeNotra.

We're now, I think, three for three on times I've been on the show and

well, there's a funny moment in the book, actually, where I'm pursuing.

Well, you do own a mirror, don't you?

When I was pursuing the story about this alleged Trump love child, you know, I had to go to this family and, out of respect, say, look, the story is about the transaction, it's not about the underlying rumor.

But I do want to get your comment in case there's something that you want to add to this.

And I wind up talking to the man who raised this young woman, and

he says it's not true in his view and so forth, which I reflected in the reporting.

But there's also a funny moment where I say, look, I understand what it's like to be besieged by the tablets.

And he's like, oh, yeah, you're a Pharaoh.

Gives me just this pitying look.

So, yes,

what would Frank Sinatra say about this?

That's what you want to know.

Yes, about the whole Me Too World.

I don't know.

How are we supposed to know that?

I would like to think.

Ms.

Dorabel said,

if you don't swing, don't ring.

I'm just saying, I don't know where to go.

You can ask my mom or other people

to be frank.

But I would say my hope is that people with basic ethics in whatever era, despite the complicated gray areas of this conversation, would agree that the cut-and-dry criminal allegations we're talking about about Harvey Weinstein and others were always contrary to moral standards.

Okay.

So I want to ask about Katie Hill.

I want to ask you.

I want to ask everybody here.

because all over TV I heard today, you know, she resigned yesterday, I think, and a lot of people were saying this is not fair.

Men have done far worse, which they certainly have.

She shouldn't have resigned.

Then why did she?

Then don't.

Isn't it her agency to have not resigned?

Why did Democrats always resign and Republicans never do?

I think she could have survived this.

I don't think she did anything that horrible.

I'm with you.

I think she should have stayed in Congress.

It's a personal choice, right?

We do have two Republicans who did resign in actually kind of similar circumstances.

Joe Barton of Texas had this kind of yucky nude picture of him out there, Republican.

And also Chris Lee, you might remember the Craigslist congressman, shirtless picture, soliciting,

lying by who he was.

And they, it's very interesting that they stepped down because so many other people in Congress we know, you know, I was the editor of a newspaper that covered Congress.

There are lots of people that are doing inappropriate things with campaign staff.

We don't know that Hill was doing that.

She has denied that.

She's been real clear about that allegation.

So, why not stick with it and fight them?

I don't really understand that.

And there's this discussion about is it a generational thing?

You know, you're letting pictures be taken when you're young or whatever.

We've all made dumb mistakes in our lives, and that is something that

we don't want a perfect generation of politicians who've never done anything wrong.

What is it with you, millennials, of having to take pictures of every fucking thing?

But this isn't.

We are entering a new generation of leadership where everyone is going to have this kind of a trail of pictures.

Everyone has a phone.

And look, I haven't reported on this specific case.

Obviously, there's fact-finding to be done about was she having serial inappropriate relationships in the office.

I can't comment on any of that.

What I will say is that there's a separate issue raised here, which is slut-shaming based on these kinds of sexs

needs to be something we all object to.

Whatever the merits of the conversation about her being removed from leadership,

the photos of her naked should not be a part of that conversation.

It is not relevant.

Slut shaming should not even be a concept.

Right.

I don't think.

I mean, look at what is.

A slut is someone who's having more sex than you are.

That's what it's.

What has happened to you, Bill?

That's not woke.

I've always been that way.

I mean, a slut is someone who likes sex and wants to start the sex early in the relationship.

I have always been for that.

Check my record.

Check my record.

I have been shrugged.

I'm not a fan of adults taking these kinds of photos is not something we should ever

Could Bill Clinton, if he had done what he did in 1998, survive today, or would his own party have thrown him under the bus?

I think these issues have totally gone the wayside now, right?

Look at Trump.

But they haven't for the Democrats.

But I mean, these are all choices.

I mean, I know you and Senator Franken are friends, right?

That was a choice of his.

A bad one.

To your point, though, Democrats understand that resignation is a moral issue,

which Republicans don't understand.

There should have been dozens and dozens of people in the world

resigning.

She resigned because she felt she had transgressed some ethical line, that she wasn't effective as a legislator.

Resignation throughout American history has been a symbol of protest for something that you're against.

And I think she does it for an honorable reason.

She's not doing it because she has.

Has any Democrat who has been nominated to the Supreme Court been humiliated and smeared like Brett Kavanaugh was?

Oh my gosh.

Honestly.

Well, let me build it with non-separate analogy here to

the point.

I would like an answer to the question.

Is there any parallel to the smearing of one of the most decent men to be appointed?

Oh, so you don't think he's decent?

Wait a sec.

Let me say something on your behalf.

Right, thank you.

Yes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought he was decent, and she liked him.

Right, that's right.

Okay.

And I have said, I don't like Brett Kavanaugh as a justice.

I think he's miserable and horrible.

horrible.

Right.

But I agree that to go to jump right to that that was a sexual assault case closed.

We don't know that.

In high school.

We don't know that.

Maybe it was, and maybe it was just two idiots in high school trying to scare someone.

That happened a lot.

No, you're complaining there's multiple allegations.

The two Times reporters just spent a year reporting out the Ramirez allegation and said that they found that credible too.

That's what I'm saying.

And one of them was

one of them was made up.

Then there was a wider circus happening in the city.

Do you believe Ramirez?

We put out careful reporting on Ramirez, and I absolutely think that's a good idea.

And I'm trying to keep it this week.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

Some people were saying that

they're not picked up.

Okay.

And I asked, is there any democratic parallel to what was done this year?

Well, to your point, I think that it's actually very important to interject.

Bill Clinton is a different conversation.

He has been credibly accused of rape.

That is nothing to do with gray areas.

That is, you know, I think the Juanita Broderick claim has been overdue for

anyone now.

Sure.

But the conversation now, the question was, would Bill Clinton have escaped scrutiny now for that has changed, I think.

Just for what he did.

I just think the Democrats

were not a speech for lying under oath.

I was not for his being impeached for the record, but I do want to say he was not impeached for the affair.

I said at the time, I was on radio at that time as well, I said, I don't understand why this is a big deal.

All he has to say is, yes, I sinned.

It would have been over.

The American people, even then, and including Republicans, I am one of them, would have said, exactly, people sin, let's move on.

I'm heartened by the fact that people now routinely express outrage about Bill Clinton, and particularly those more serious allegations about him.

Okay, can I read a final quote from today before we run out of time?

Louis Gomert, Republican from He Haw.

Listen to this, because this is where we're headed, and it's frightening.

He said this yesterday.

If we're going to have what they're trying to legalize as as a coup, of course he's talking about impeachment, we ought to have a right to see each of those witnesses.

Yeah, you do now.

He missed that.

Again, you seem to miss things.

It's about to push this country to a civil war if they were to get their wishes.

And there's one thing I don't want to see in my lifetime, I don't want to ever have participation in.

It's a civil war.

Yeah, reenactments are fun, but not the...

He said, some historians said guns are only involved in the last phase of the civil war

How are we going to come back from this place where we hate each other so much that this talk is happening now?

We're like it's like a prison yard.

You're either with the Aryan nation or the Black Brotherhood

This country is going to be in a civil war.

He may be right that the guns are the last phase of it and we are now living in the first phase of it.

It's colossally irresponsible to liken it to a civil war in part because it's a dog whistle for people who recourse to talking about the Second Amendment and the use of guns in this kind of context.

I think one of the things the Democrats can do is to try to settle it down and say, look, this is a judicial procedure.

There are reasons that we're doing this.

It's not about us against them.

It's about a president betraying the people that support him.

So to talk about a civil war is really irresponsible and dangerous speech.

Well, and think about the what's next, right?

Those types of framing of what's happening right now just pushes people into different corners, right?

Instead of if people care about the climate or gun policy or something else, they need to get to work.

And you know where they need to get to work?

They need to get to work in places like Colorado and Maine and Arizona and think about that Senate and whatever's going to happen.

And that's where when you hear that language and you care about the country, whichever direction you want it to go.

This is why I've been saying for three years that he's not leaving if he loses the election.

Do you think he will voluntarily leave if he loses the election?

I have no doubt.

And among the reasons that I have no doubt is that I don't know a single conservative, and I'm very involved in that world, not a single conservative would allow him to stay in office.

We believe,

name one, name one.

Name all of them.

As soon as he starts.

I'm a pretty prominent conservative.

I have a billion views on my website on PragerU.

And I will tell you that we would find it intolerable for a Republican, as much as a Democrat, to

reject an election result.

He could say whatever he likes.

We would not have supporters.

That will be a first.

Anyway, thank you, panel.

It's time for New Rule.

Okay.

New rule, always look your best.

You never know when unexpected guests will drop in.

Just because you're on jihad, there's no reason not to touch up your roots.

New rule, when I text you the thumbs up, that means I'm done talking to you.

It doesn't mean this conversation's great, let's keep it going.

Think of the thumbs up as the fake orgasm of texting.

It's meant to be kind, but what it really means is I'm bored and ready for this to be over.

New rule, the Me Too movement has to do something about the time Darth Vader choked that guy in the workplace.

I know it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and he's not actually touching them, but tell that to Al Franken.

Not touching that one, Doug.

Not touching it.

New rule, everyone has to stop saying, yes, queen.

Like all other slang, it started with black gays, got picked up by white gays, then by real housewives, then straight white girls, then straight white guys, then high school kids in Indiana, and now your homophobic grandma says it when she wins at bingo.

Let it go.

I'm not throwing shade, I just needed to spill some tea.

New rule, the hospital chart has to add a new face for pain, and it has to be the one Trump made when he was booed at the World Series.

I think that's funny.

That's good.

Okay.

I do.

Thank you.

See, we'll start there.

And finally, new rule, never forget that the man who promised we would win so much that we'd get tired of winning just lost an entire country.

Forget for a moment the ethnic cleansing and the double crossing of an ally, and let's just focus tonight on the long-held Republican obsession with just not losing, because that used to be kind of a big thing.

You couldn't lose a country.

The John Birch Society was named after a missionary who was the first casualty when we lost China.

FDR was vilified because he lost Eastern Europe.

Truman lost Korea.

Obama lost Libya.

And Hillary, of course, lost Wisconsin.

But

that was it.

America didn't lose countries.

And then a few weeks ago, Vladimir Putin had a birthday, and as a president, Trump gave him Syria.

Which is fair, since in 2016, Trump gave Putin gave Trump America.

But again, I seem to vaguely remember when Republicans were against gifting countries to the Russians.

But then I also remember when they were against tariffs, deficits, and adultery.

I even remember when the Republicans used to like the FBI.

Simpler times.

Did you know Eisenhower was against Nazis?

It's true.

We like to talk in America about presidents having doctrines in foreign policy.

JFK was pretty clear about his doctrine in 1961.

He said, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order to assure the success of liberty.

And now we know the Trump doctrine.

I wish them all a lot of luck.

If Russia wants to get involved with Syria, that's really up to them.

Well,

that's one way to work with the Kremlin, but you really wouldn't call it containment.

This is how Republicans can test whether your devotion to Trump has passed into the realm of the irrational.

If Trump hands Syria over to Russia and Iran, two nations you've spent the last 50 years calling evil, and you're suddenly good with it, well, the results are in.

And I'm sorry, you've tested positive for cult.

Because

since the end of World War II, the Republican Party has been pretty consistent about one message, that we're the national security tough guys.

These colors don't run.

And then Trump ran from Syria like he owed it money.

We fought side by side with two million Kurds, and then one morning Trump tells them, lose my number.

Complete with the walk of shame footage.

Do you see that?

We left Syria barefoot in a torn dress, pelted with rotten potatoes by the betrayed locals.

If Obama did this, the headline on Fox News would be, Muslim to fellow Muslims, here, have some more caliphate.

Obama took a lot of heat for how he handled Syria.

He didn't enforce the red line.

He was leading from behind.

He backed the wrong militia.

But he didn't just flat out lose it.

You'd think that would be at least as big a deal to Trey Gowdy as the consulate in Benghazi.

Louis Gomart couldn't tell Benghazi from Bengay.

But when Democrats lost it, Republicans reacted like the Japanese bombed Graceland.

They held

They held six investigations that dragged on for three years.

Fox News did over a thousand stories suggesting that Hillary either fucked it up, covered it up, ordered it, or killed our troops personally by hand.

When Obama wanted to release a small number of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, Republicans went pink chicken little.

Even the prisoners we tortured so much that they could only babble incoherently like Giuliani on Fox News.

We couldn't send them back.

But when hundreds of ISIS prisoners get out, Trump says, well, they'll be escaping to Europe.

Yeah, fuck Europe.

It's not like they're our allies or anything.

Democrats, you can't make more of an issue out of this?

Geez, the divide between what is okay for Republicans to do versus what is okay for Democrats is just so out of hand now.

There's always this double standard.

Republicans can lose countries.

Democrats can't.

Democrats have to say how they're going to pay for stuff.

Republicans just put it on the card.

A Republican could pay hush money to a porn star or run for Senate in Alabama as an accused child molester, but a Democrat can't get caught with a woman, even if she is a woman.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Hulk Touch in Eugene, Oregon, January 26th, and at the Belk Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, February 15th.

I want to thank Richard Spingle, Christina Valentoni, Dennis Krager, Rodin Farrow, and Dr.

Jake Orton.

Stay tuned for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.